Asia – The stronghold of the Anti-Traction League. Eastern China is evidently eradicated by the War and the Himalayas serve as the center for Anti-Tractionist civilization, where the mountains make it impossible for mobile cities to approach. SFFS Guest Talk – Philip Reeve. Nottingham University: YouTube. Archived from the original on 6 June 2016.

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a b Hungry City Chronicles / Mortal Engines Quartet series listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Retrieved 23 November 2019. The title is a quotation from Act III, Scene iii of William Shakespeare's play Othello ("Othello: And O you mortal engines whose rude throats/Th'immortal Jove's dread clamors counterfeit..." – Line 352). In the novel, it refers to the fact that the society of Municipal Darwinism is not sustainable living and that the cities' engines are indeed mortal. Wren and Theo are captured by General Naga, Green Storm's second-in-command, and brought before Fang, who takes the real Book and memorizes the codes. Knowing that Fang will kill thousands, Zero commands Shrike to kill Fang. Shrike destroys Fang, scattering her battered pieces across the coastline of Africa. Cloud9 begins to burn and descend. Tom and Hester recover the Jenny Haniver, whilst Wren and Theo escape with the wounded Pennyroyal. Naga seizes control of Green Storm and leaves Cloud9 with Zero and other passengers. Eventually, Shrike came across a disfigured young girl named Hester Shaw, whom he adopted. They lived together first aboard the scavenger-platform of Strole and later the town of Twyne. At some point in this period he began collecting mechanical devices and tools.

The book is set in a post-apocalyptic world, ravaged by the "Sixty Minute War", a global conflict so violent it caused massive geological upheaval. To escape earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other natural threats, a Nomad leader called Nikola Quercus (known throughout the Quartet as Nicholas Quirke, and revered as a deity) installed massive engines and wheels on London, enabling it to dismantle (or eat) other cities for resources. The technology rapidly spread and evolved into what is known as "Municipal Darwinism". Although the planet has since become stable, Municipal Darwinism has spread worldwide. Because scientific progress has almost completely halted and much technological and scientific knowledge was lost during the war, "Old Tech" is highly prized and recovered by scavengers and archaeologists. Europe, some of Asia, North Africa, Antarctica, and the Arctic are dominated by Traction Cities. In contrast, North America - often identified as "the dead continent" due to the extensive destruction it suffered during the war - and the rest of the world is the stronghold of the Anti-Traction League, which seeks to keep cities from moving and thus stop the intense consumption of the planet's remaining resources. Anchorage-in-Vineland – The static and stable version of the Traction City of Anchorage which had decided to stop wandering the Arctic wastes and settle in the green and unspoiled land of Vineland (in North America). When Anchorage was a Traction City, it was not predatory but chose to gain its wealth by trading with other cities. The Fever Crumb Series is a second series of novels set centuries or millennia before the events depicted in the Quartet. The main character is Fever Crumb, a London Engineer who is partially descended from the Scriven, a mutant race of humans. The series also introduced the character Shrike, revealing his origins before he became a Stalker. Anna Fang, a friendly but deadly aviatrix and Anti-Tractionist agent who rescues Hester and Tom from being sold into slavery.

Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve Plot Summary | LitCharts Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve Plot Summary | LitCharts

The characters where originally going to be adults, but he later changed them to teenagers. The original drafts were intended to be an adult novel but after several rejections, Scholastic said they might be interested in Mortal Engines as a children's story. In the refactoring the story was simplified, removing several characters and much content such as the city politics that Reeve thought would not be interesting to children. [7] Tom Natsworthy, a 15-year-old boy who is a Third-Class Apprentice Historian who is unwittingly brought along with Hester. There are factions of people in traction cities and static ones engaged in a war to end each other’s way of life, but little is done to convince the reader that either side has much of a point. We never spend enough time with the characters enjoying the fruits of living in rich London to become appalled at the dark truths that allow such decadence. We only learn of injustices and dystopian concepts once they are revealed to characters. The Traction Codex is a fictional reference book set in the world of Mortal Engines, written by Philip Reeve and Jeremy Levett. [11] The Traction Codex has only been published in a digital format, as it was originally available only for the digital version of the Mortal Engines Quartet. The book was later made available as a stand-alone e-book.The Mortal Engines Quartet ( Hungry City Chronicles in the United States), [1] also known as the Predator Cities Quartet, [2] is a series of epic young adult science fiction novels by the British novelist and illustrator Philip Reeve. He began the first volume of the series, Mortal Engines, in the 1980s, and it was published in 2001. Reeve then published three further novels, Predator's Gold (2003), Infernal Devices (2005), and A Darkling Plain (2006). [3] Hester Shaw, a 15-year-old short-tempered assassin whose parents were murdered by Valentine and seeks vengeance.

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A few of the people in Mortal Engines are named after places in Devon, where Reeve lives, including Chudleigh, Tamerton Foliot and the River Plym. In the quartet, Miss Plym and Chudleigh Pomeroy are both in the Guild of Historians, and Tamarton Foliot is an "Alternative" historian. Both Shrike and Smew are named after birds, and Pennyroyal is named after a flower. [7] In the final battle of the Nomad Wars, Shrike led a legion of Stalkers against his former masters but they, like the rest of the Nomad armies, were destroyed when Traction London entered the battle, though Shrike himself survived. His subsequent whereabouts and deeds during the Wheeled War and the Zagwan Deluge are unknown, though it might be assumed that he fought in these conflicts given his prior behaviour and martial prowess. Kit Solent was an archaeologist in London, with a particular interest in Scriven artefacts. He met and fell in love with Katie Solent (nee Unthank), whose father had worked with Auric Godshawk. They had two children, Ruan and Fern, but Katie died of the blue flu soon after Fern's birth.

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Kit Solent's corpse was augmented with technology the Movement had procured from the Remembering Machines to create one of their many resurrected soldiers; it was at this time that he was given the name Shrike. He destroyed two of his fellow Stalkers upon being resurrected but afterward proved an obedient member of the Lazarus Brigade for some time, fighting in major battles of the escalating Nomad Wars, including the long-running Battle of Hill 60. He abandoned the Movement army after recovering a degree of self-awareness but continued fighting on all sides as a mercenary for the rest of the conflict. Urbivore – a short story written by Reeve in the 1990s, which – along with the above – became the basis for the Quartet He has lived his whole life believing that the practice of destroying other towns, a philosophy known as Municipal Darwinism, is a noble and just form of existence. Conversely living in a static city on the earth’s surfaces seems profane and barbaric to him. Bujak, Gabrielle (13 November 2020). "Why HBO Should Reboot Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines UnBoxed Life". unboxedlifemag.com. UnBoxed Life. Archived from the original on 7 January 2021 . Retrieved 17 January 2020. Valentine is sent away by Crome on a "secret mission", much to Katherine's dismay. Suspicious of her father, Katherine begins investigating events in London, along with Apprentice Engineer Bevis Pod, whom she befriends after discovering he witnessed Tom chasing Hester. They discover that Valentine salvaged an Old Tech weapon called MEDUSA for London, and that the Guild of Engineers have reassembled it inside St Paul's Cathedral. The Cathedral's dome transforms to reveal the weapon, which is then used to destroy a much larger city pursuing London.

What to Read After Mortal Engines | BookTrust What to Read After Mortal Engines | BookTrust

The Mortal Engines, due to its post-apocalyptic steampunk aesthetic, will probably get lumped into Science Fiction. But make no mistake this is pure fantasy. Tom Natsworthy goes on Campbell’s Hero’s journey in an almost paint by numbers fashion. Reeve’s almost does some interesting things by retaining the Hero’s refusal of the call for so long, but again he fails to make Natsworthy’s blind devotion to Municipal Darwinism meaningful. The story essentially comes down to good versus evil, but the characters are so unexplored that even that falls flat. Final Thoughts Some names just kept on popping up! 'The two that spring to mind are The Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix and His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman,' said @HHALibrary. 'They're fantasy series which are brimming with ideas and they get away from all the wizards, dragons and so on.'Sixteen years later, most inhabitants of the now-static city Anchorage-in-Vineland are happy with their new lives, except Wren Natsworthy, the teenage daughter of Tom and Hester. One night, she encounters three Lost Boys—Remora, Fishcake, and their older leader Gargle—who have come to Anchorage in search of the Tin Book, an artifact that contains the activation codes for orbital weapons left over from the Sixty Minute War. Gargle persuades Wren to join them. His plans to write a science fiction novel were laid in the late 1980s. [6] At that time, he has stated that he originally thought of the idea of traction cities when people where complaining about the growth of a city that threatened to engulf smaller towns. A loosely-related short story Urbivore, as well as Orbital Trash, written earlier served as a basis for the novel. It has several similarities and differences to the eventual settings of the story. Readitdaddy had a pretty unarguable reason for recommending this one: 'If kids are going to get into dystopia, do it via one of the masters of the genre.' Fair enough! For more steampunk